News

My rate of blogging has drop slightly recently but I hope to return to a more normal pace soon. I’ve been busy with school, work, my honour society and training. My next running race is coming up quickly on Boxing Day in Hamilton, Ontario. It will be the 86th edition of the Harold Webster 10 mile race. The race comes at a good time as the caloric expenditure of the race allows me to eat well during the holidays and not worry about gaining any weight. My plans for New Years aren’t settled but I’m hoping for something special this year. We will have to see. On another matter, I’m working on having an informal mentor. He is someone I have known for a couple of years and is mentoring a couple of other students and I am looking forward to his guidance and advice.

Philadelphia

As I type this entry I am looking out the window at a banner that says Philadelphia Airport. My flight back to Ottawa was been delayed for about two hours so I decided to fire up the laptop and catch up on the happenings of the day. The conference was a lot of fun. Yesterday, I went to Turner field for a Atlanta Braves game and it was a great chance to chat with some of the delegates from Australia and New Zealand. The Braves won which was a bonus. The toga party went well as the blue material that I bought for my toga worked out well. One of the neat things I did was to meet Jack Canfield. He was a keynote speaker at one of the sessions and wrote the "Chicken Soup for the Sole" books. I bought one of his books and he autographed it for me. I explored the olympic park that was built in connection with the 1996 Olympics. I was able to find a couple of geocaches which was fun to do. One of the interesting things that happened occurred when I was walking through a black neighborhood on the way back from the Martin Luther King Museum. I was passing a group of black guys and they wanted to know what a "white boy" was doing in their neighborhood. I kept on soldiering down the street. The flight has been delayed again so back to surfing.

Google Analytics

One thing that most bloggers are curious about is many people read their blog and possibly a little about the viewers. There are a variety of tools that a blogger can use to find out information. Some websites are free and others charge for this service. Jason talked about a data source that provided information about visitors to his site in this entry. I have been using Google Analytics for a little while and learning very gradually the capabilties of the software. I also use it to keep track of visits to my brother's website. Google Analytics recently came out recently with a beta version of the software which is more powerful and richer than the earlier versions. I stumbled on the new beta version by mistake but look forward to exploring its capabilities.